Jeff Sessions' Life Is Currently a Living Hell

The bad news is that Donald Trump is still President of the United States, and Jeff Sessions is still his attorney general. The good news is that Sessions, the politician most likely to be cast as Voldemort in an Capitol Hill community theater production of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, is currently living in some previously undiscovered level of hell, and although no amount of schadenfreude can make up for the damage that Jeff Sessions and his archaic, discriminatory agenda has already wrought on the American justice system, things are... pretty shitty right now. Forgive me for taking some small measure of joy in the little things.

This all started last week, when Donald Trump unleashed a startlingly blunt attack on Sessions, castigating the attorney general's decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. To my genuine surprise, Jeff Sessions did not resign even after weathering this public excoriation, which means that the president has since decided to make it his personal mission to drag a sitting member of his own Cabinet through the Twittersphere for the foreseeable future.

The likeliest explanation is that someone convinced Trump that Robert Mueller's Russia inquiry is actually Sessions' fault, since if Sessions hadn't had to step aside, Mueller never would have been appointed in the first place. (Yes, one might argue that a better target for Trump's ire might be any one of the president's myriad associates and/or family members who seem to be medically incapable of remembering their interactions with Russians, but this president will never be mistaken for a man who thinks rationally or takes responsibility for his own actions.) Perhaps Trump believes that if he gets a new attorney general who would not be obligated to recuse, that person's presence would render Mueller's superfluous. Axios reports that Trump is indeed asking friends what they think of the idea of firing Sessions, a question to which he is apparently receiving answers that do not inspire much confidence in the future of the republic.

Reflecting the conversations going on inside Trumpworld, the political
associate says he replied: "If you're going to fire people at Justice,
don't you want to save that bullet for Mueller?"

Set aside, just for a moment, the possibility that Donald Trump really might fire Mueller, an event that would plunge this country into a constitutional crisis of unprecedented scope no matter who happens to be attorney general at that moment. There is delightful irony in the fact that Sessions' own conduct—remember, he only recused because of hisundisclosed meetings with Russian officials—has now sidelined him in a role which, in almost any other administration, would be unattainable for a fringe-politics dinosaur like him. In winning confirmation as attorney general, Jeff Sessions finally excised the demons he carried after being rejected from the federal bench three decades ago. It took six months for those best-laid plans to implode in spectacular fashion.

If Sessions stays, his boss' relentless efforts to humiliate and marginalize him will further sully the reputation of the Department of Justice and grind whatever scraps of dignity that Jeff Sessions imagines he still possesses into a fine dust. If he goes, his long-awaited opportunity to hijack this country's law enforcement apparatus and impose his morally bankrupt agenda on the American people will come to a quiet, ignominious end. However this adventure ultimately ends, it couldn't happen to a worse guy, and he has no one to blame but himself.

Since 1957, GQ has inspired men to look sharper and live smarter with its unparalleled coverage of style, culture, and beyond. From award-winning writing and photography to binge-ready videos to electric live events, GQ meets millions of modern men where they live, creating the moments that create conversations.